The Nintendo Switch shot to success on the strength of fantastic new games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. Those games established the Switch as a must-have console and, during the system’s launch window, that’s exactly what it needed.
How The Switch Cannibalized The Wii U’s Back Catalog
Those marquee games weren’t the only thing that kept the Switch going for nearly eight years. Of the top 20 best-selling Switch games, five are remasters, remakes, or ports. The number one best-selling game on the Switch, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, is an expanded port of a Wii U game. The second best-selling Mario platformer on the console wasn’t the series’ new entry, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, it was New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe… another expanded port of a Wii U game. Wonder also trails Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury which was, you guessed it, an expanded port of a Wii U game. The top 20 also includes two remasters/remakes of Pokemon games, with Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl at 13, and the ground-up remakes Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee at 12.
As good as the new stuff on Switch was, its long lifespan was buoyed by these re-releases. This made the games that never migrated to Switch standout all the more. In fact, if Nintendo was hard-up for originals, it could build a pretty fantastic launch line-up for the Switch 2 exclusively from eagerly anticipated games that skipped the Switch.
Building A Launch Line-Up Out Of Switch Games We Never Got
The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are two of the only first-party Wii U games that never made the leap to Switch and they also strike me as the most egregious example of Nintendo leaving money on the table. The Big N seemed to port everything it could get its hands on from the Wii U to the Switch, yet skipped over these games that had already been remastered for the Wii U. That recent upgrade meant that new ports likely would have required little additional work to get them up to modern standards. It’s a bizarre choice, but it gives the Switch 2 an easy lay-up.
Metroid Prime 2 and 3 are in a similar position. The full Prime trilogy got a collected re-release on the Wii, but with Metroid Prime Remastered, Nintendo left the sequels stranded. Rumors pointed to a full Metroid Prime Switch trilogy being in development for years but it just never materialized. If Nintendo is waiting to release it until 4 finally arrives, these two could end up being Switch 2 launch games.
And finally, where in the cosmos is Super Mario Galaxy 2? With Super Mario 3-D All-Stars, Nintendo brought the first three 3D Mario platformers to Switch (then promptly Thanos-snapped it out of existence) but left Galaxy 2 stranded on the Wii. Some hoped that this might mean the game would get its own standalone remaster sometime down the road, but that has not been the case. As a result, it’s the only 3D Mario I’ve never played and I’d like to remedy that.
All in all, that’s a pretty good lineup. With the Wii U catalog mostly exhausted, Nintendo won’t be able to coast on rereleases like it did with the Switch. But if it keeps the console flush with strong new games, there’s still some room to keep digging in the back catalog.
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It’s A Bummer Super Mario Galaxy 2 Isn’t Coming To The Switch
A big improvement on the original, Super Mario Galaxy 2 deserves better than to be left in the past.